Stopping the cycle of violence

It is not unnatural that Americans should be enraged at the heinous and devastating attack on their heartland. Cries for revenge and simplification of what constitutes good and evil are also a quite normal initial response, while shock, confusion and incomprehension reign. Such reactionary sentiments are, not unexpectedly, being associated with patriotism and even virtuosity and have been voiced by the U.S. president, military commanders, congressmen and many others.

However, America has the opportunity to show that it is truly a great nation by not losing control to reactionarism. Retributive revenge may satisfy the bloodlust of some ordinary Americans who, sadly, can only come to terms with this attack on their pride and security through jingoism and misplaced religious fervor; but it is only likely to broaden and deepen the feud that currently exists between Muslim fundamentalists and the United States. America, although it may demonstrate its supremacy militarily, will ultimately lose through having to turn its own society into a closely guarded fortress, a process that must inevitably curtail the freedoms of its own people.

Instead America needs to take time to carefully and calmly determine how it is going to respond to this atrocity and, hopefully, it will decide to rise above the temptation to enter a cycle of violence like the futile one that is currently engulfing Palestine.

The world is watching to see whether America, in defense of its pride, will eschew the values it so proudly vaunts on the world stage and which, it claims, are at the basis of its society. If the unchristian eye-for-an-eye, albeit indiscriminate and invoked in the name of God, is the policy adopted, it could result in the undercutting of the very foundations of America's greatness and, thus, lead to its inexorable demise.

This is a testing time for America and how it decides to respond over the next few weeks will ultimately determine who is going to win this, a battle that is far from being only a military one.

FRANK RICHARDSON

Tangerang, Banten